I am just back from a couple of weeks in British Columbia. It occurred to me that for me B.C. is the Old Country; where I am from; the crucible of old traditions that have stayed with me in my wanderings.
My parents met on a ship from the Netherlands and settled in B.C. in 1958. I was born in New Westminster. My parents split in 1964 and we went our separate ways; not sure exactly what led to the breakup, but is was a bit scorched earth I guess in the sense that neither of my parents, nor us three eldest kids, ever lived in Vancouver much after that. That said, both my parents went on to have kids with other partners. Now I have three siblings in B.C.: a brother in Surrey south of Vancouver, a sister on Vancouver Island and a sister further north on the mainland in the South Cariboo region.
For whatever reason, it had been 30 years since I visited B.C.; the last time I was there was to produce some content for a television show I worked for at the time, called Téléservice, on Radio-Québec. I remember doing a segment on how happy everyone seemed in Vancouver, balancing rocks on one another at the beach of English Bay and getting dolphins tattoed on their arms and stuff. I also shot a segment about snowboard fashion trends.
Last time I was in Vancouver it felt provincial; this time it felt bustling. The SkyTrain had one line back then; now I think it has four lines and it is expanding. I caught a train from the airport and then switched for a double-decker bus. I climbed to the top level to look out the front window, which was as good as any amusement park ride. As we hurtled south the bus wove in and out of bus lanes and offramps like Jacques Villeneuve. In the distance I saw snowcapped mountains. I eventually made it to my brother’s home in White Rock.
The next day I felt very civilized as I lunched with the editor of my upcoming maple syrup book, at a little Italian joint in Gastown. In the afternoon I marvelled at the street trees – Vancouver’s biodiversity puts Toronto to shame.
Vancouver Island felt even more lush. My brother and I hiked in the Comox Valley through second-growth forest, that is, forest that was cut once, sometime in the 20th century. The B.C. people are all doom and gloom about the future of the forest but I have to say, and this is going to come off probably sounding ignorant, that their second-growth forests have bigger trees than our old-growth forests, so maybe even though they are cutting trees all the time out there and people are wildly pessimistic about the future of the forest, well, maybe we are going to be okay.
We swam in a river at a place called Nymph Falls. Swim is a big word. We jumped in and got the hell out. It was glacial.
It was nice to see my uncle. My father has passed away; one of his youngest brothers is alive. He and my brother’s Mom are next-door neighbours; in the 1970s they bought tumble-down miner’s shacks built of rough-cut fir trees; each has renovated their house to the hilt and they now live in palaces. The weather was cool; my uncle and aunt had a little wood fire burning in the house and another fire crackling in my uncle’s workshop, which was cozy.
As for my remark about the Old Country, my sister who is in the Comox Valley came to brunch with her husband and daughter at the home of my brother’s mother; it was touching how she gave her some marijuana plants to grow at home.
Later in the Interior I was struck by the devastation that fire last summer wrought in the Fraser Canyon: shocking. I jumped in a lake called Sulphurous Lake – equally arctic. Once again: In and out.
I met up with some friends from forestry school at U of T; they all have good jobs in the forest in Smithers, which was too far north for me to drive, since B.C. is absolutely huge, but luckily they came south for fun and games: Scrabble, Scattergories, shooting clay targets with shotguns, a motorboat ride, a campfire, and a run through a forest. Yes, we packed it in! I even saw Prince George and, despite rumours that it’s a redneck town, I participated in a Pride trivia night with questions such as, “Name the participant in the Stonewall Riots who was later elected to political office?”
(My sister got the answer: Harvey Milk.)
All told the Old Country gave me a good buzz: it’s a bit hidebound in its traditions (logging and smoking pot) but all in all it feels like the land of opportunity.